This invention relates to an eyeletting machine and more particularly to a manually actuated fused eyeletting machine capable of cold and fused setting of eyelets and funnelets to printed circuit boards.
This invention constitutes an improvement over the fused eyeletting machine disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 3,739,141 issued June 12, 1973 which is incorporated herein by reference. That machine employed an upper tool and a resilient support structure for the lower tool and its mount which included a rocker arm pivoted to the frame with the mount being seated against one end portion of the rocker arm and an adjustable spring bias means bearing against the other end portion of the rocker arm. Adjustment of the spring bias means acted through pivotal movement of the rocker arm to thereby predetermine the maximum setting pressure applied to a workpiece by the opposed upper and lower tools.
One of the major disadvantages of this structure for setting the pressure is that there is no means or provision for resetting the support structure to a previously determined pressure for various size eyelets thus eliminating the necessity of relying on the "trial and error" method of setting the pressure each time it is desired or necessary to change the size of the eyelet.
It is therefore the primary object of the present invention to provide a superior machine capable of use with equal facility on eyelets and funnelets of different sizes and on printed circuit boards of different thicknesses.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an eyeletting machine which utilizes a novel and simplified support structure for resiliently biasing the lower tool to exert a predetermined force against which the upper tool acts during the setting operation of eyelets and the like.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide an eyeletting machine which gives a visual indication of the amount of predetermined force selected to be exerted for each specific size eyelet encountered so that the machine can be easily and rapidly reset to exert this predetermined whenever desired.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide a balanced machine usable alternatively upright or on its back.